Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [31]
That was the ruse. That was when they barred the door. He shouted. Called his mother a traitor a thousand times.
‘Traitor? You’ll all get killed. Who ever saw a war of fists versus guns? And you’ll be one of the first. Just so they can have a laugh about who killed Papagaio’s Hercules.’
He was left alone. With the mannequin, the tall, black woman the harpooner had brought. Punching the old leather bag Arturo had given him. Thumping the handcrafted sack of sand he himself had hung from the beam. At it all day long. The house’s lament on account of his rage. ‘Stop it!’ shouted Pombo from the other side of the door. ‘You’re making the whole city groan.’
‘Let me out, Pombo!’ he pleaded. ‘On the roofs, they’re shooting to kill.’
‘It’s worse on the ground. Wait until the hunting season’s over.’
He thought the mannequin didn’t have eyes. Or a mouth. The head, an oval sphere. But it’s funny. In the half-light, he begins to discern features. Subtle lines appear on the wooden egg. He opens the skylight and leans out with the Tall Woman. A cat approaches along the edge. Looks towards the Casares’ garden and starts to meow. For a moment, the shots fall silent, as if to respect the night, and other animal sounds are heard. The seagulls’ scandalised calls, the cats’ detailed inventory, the dogs’ distant denunciation. At night, in the beams from the lighthouse, Curtis perceives beauty in the mannequin’s face. The intermittent beams bring it to life. The cat comes and goes, but doesn’t make up its mind to climb down to the Casares’ garden. There are voices. It’s not clear if they’re coming from inside. There’s no light on, but the windows the pillagers have broken disturb the domestic darkness. From time to time, torch beams flicker from the other side, the front of the house on Panadeiras Street. The darkness is also in pieces. Translucent, empty. They must have taken the doors, curtains and lamps as well. Secrets, he thought, have nothing to do with darkness. Secrets belong to the light. What was going on in Madrid, what had happened to the Casares? The darkness of the house was translucent. Dangerous. The cats refused to climb down to the garden. Skirted their old haunt cautiously, warily. Eyeing the crater. What had happened to the girl with the rebellious hair of Orzán waves?
He’d also like to have known what had happened to Flora. During the day in the Academy, he listened to all the voices, interpreted all the noises. He heard what the voices said about others. But he didn’t hear Flora or anything about her. He’d like to have heard her energetic dance, the telegraph of her heels. He thinks about her when the shots start up again. Tries to understand their meaning.
And then single reports, cartridge by cartridge. Someone trying not to waste any ammunition. Each shot sounding like the last.
He remembered Arturo da Silva the day he threw a succession of euphoric punches, which the champ answered one by one, cartridge by cartridge, he said. But now the sound of automatic gunfire silences the handcrafted shots. Showers the sky. And when it grows tired, there is the stubborn response of a fugitive on the tiles, counting his cartridges, one by one, the space between each clap of the bell allowing time to imagine where they’re coming from, where they’re going. The automatic gunfire starts up again with renewed vigour. Bites pieces off the tiles. Silences once and for all the fugitive who was saving his cartridges.
The Tall Woman’s head rolls down into the gutter, where it is stopped by the